The Other Day
by The Smiling Shadow
Summary: The other day I thought of you. A series of letters between two forgotten friends. They tell of their hopes their failures, and these strange dreams they've been having of memories that never happened. A war, a woman, the rain. Neo and Smith
1. A Letter of Hope to an Old Friend?

Dear friend,

The other day I thought of you, probably for the first time in years. I was afraid for a moment. It was around the time I was waiting at a cross walk, and I found myself looking around, afraid they'd come. But I guess it's been so long they've sort of forgotten to care about me.

I have a job now, and it has nothing to do with computers. I wanted to be a doctor honestly, I thought that would have been a good route to go. But the farthest I was allowed to go was watch the morgue. Not that I could have paid for medical school anyway. I don't examine the bodies or anything, but I sit there and make sure the people are safe, that they don't leave, and no one comes to take them away. I sit in the dim light and read some newspapers most of the time.

For a while I took up poetry. My mom was a poet, she was sick most of her life and wrote most of her poems in bed. I don't think she ever published or anything like that, but dad seemed to enjoy them. But I'm afraid I lacked in poetry what I lacked in music ultimately, rhythm. I still do it anyway, not that I let anyone see it. Maybe when I die I can have them given out to strangers, who knows maybe someone will like it.

I found a song the other day that used to be in a music box I had. The song sounded slow and sad to me but my mother insisted it was happy. I found the words to that song, it was sad. A girl left a boy, and he was sad.

They gave me a therapist. I go and see her everyday before work, cause I watch the morgue at night. Sometimes she'll come over to my apartment, we'll have some food. I don't know why I need a therapist but they're making me see her. Sometimes I don't really have anything to talk about, so I muse about some dream I had or something. She always seems intent on listening to me, but I'm afraid that's because it's her job and that I'm not as interesting as she makes it seem. She's quite nice actually now that I think about it. She's old and she shows me pictures of her granddaughter, adopted you know. She's black and her granddaughter's Indian, what a world we live in now huh? It's a great thing I think. After all Mom was Hawaiian and Dad was about the shade of paper.

I don't know, I never felt that different from anybody. I had some Asian in my eyes and an unconditional love of steamed rice. What made me different from everyone else was not what I looked like but how I felt. I guess it was a stupid teenaged faze that just lasted up into my adulthood.

Sometimes the guys in suits come by and talk to me.

I don't know what I did to deserve such excellent treatment, and by excellent I mean horrible and lacking the idea of personal space. Sometimes I get the feeling there's cameras in my apartment. I'll get into this weird mindset where I literally check everything in my one room home. I don't know I always was suspicious of those above, since Dad left after Mom went away. It may sound ridiculous to you, if I recall you had a very level head, but still, there's nothing more scary to me than someone else being there. Watching me you know, it gives me the creeps.

I get the feeling sometimes that I'm being trained or something.

The strange feeling that as my life gets more and more methodic I'm some how being numbed. I get up, I have my oatmeal and Tastee Wheat, maybe PowerAde, the green one, it's my favorite color. I wait around and I go to my therapist then I go to work and then I sleep. It's like this each and every day. Do you ever get that feeling? It's…I don't know tiring.

Do you ever just stand in the middle of the street and look up at the sky? Do you wonder what it'd be like to fly?

No of course not. That's not really your thing. But you're so high up, higher up than me. I forget actually, I'm sorry. I haven't thought of you in such a long time, I've forgotten. I'm so sure you told me once when we were closer, of your childhood, of how you came to be so high, I'm sure you did but I can't recall it. Did you have as hard a time as mean in all this? It must be easier up there, you must have an apartment four times as big as mine, a home, a house, a working heating system. You must have the time to date and don't need a therapist. The methodic life has led you to success, but not me.

But do you remember, do you remember how hard it was? Did you ever look to the sky and want to fly away from it all?

My therapist, the woman with the Indian girl, she tells me my mind wanders. I guess that's true my focus can very much vary, I just get bored so easily often times. It's true. I can stand on a street corner for the rest of my life, recalling something that never happened. I can stand on that corner and look up at the sky and I swear to you, I can feel the wind on my face. I can feel my hair helplessly whip around. I can feel the wind spread through my shirt collar onto my chest and back. I can hear the utter silence from so high above this chaos.

I should try sky diving.

Even then, you have all that gear on, it can't be the same. No, I'd fly like Superman does. I don't want wings, one they're too big to walk around normally, and you'd exert yourself flapping so much. No, fly like Superman, just get up and fly with seemingly nothing propelling you. Simply defy gravity.

I've been going to Church each Sunday, for no good reason actually. I don't know man, about God and everything. I just can't imagine. But I go anyway out of some impulse. I find it fascinating that all these people come willingly more than I go for myself. Someday I want to go to Europe to see the big Cathedrals. The Houses Of God that actually appear to be his house. St. Paul I hear is huge, these monoliths of God. It's all just amazing I think, religion. How people go so far into it. I can't imagine believing in something so greatly, I don't think I've ever believed in anything like that. I don't think I could fight with my life for something I believed in.

I guess I'm selfish and cowardly. I don't think you're like that, I think you're braver than I, I can't recall. But when I thought of you, I saw a man I'd be afraid of, an intimidating man.

I wish I had an iPod, you probably have one. I bet you really like music. No one would guess but I bet you have a stereo system playing Moby or something. That's okay, nothing wrong with Moby.

I feel so unfulfilled. I feel so lonely and empty. I hope you get this letter and I hope you write back as quickly as you can. Not to sound desperate but lately I've become increasingly unsatisfied with everything. Like I knew something more but I've forgotten. Do you get that feeling? Like you've forgotten something extremely important? It's a horrible feeling, a sense of terror comes over you, I can hardly describe it. Perhaps we can meet, we can go have noodles or a coffee. I recall being close to you.

The thing is I'm having trouble making friends. I always had trouble but this time it's particularly hard. Ever since the coma I've been on a different wavelength than anyone else. I can't seem to find anyone willing to sit down with me. Like everyone has an instinct to somehow avoid me. Maybe I'm just being dramatic.

I thought of you the other day and a great warmness came upon me. I felt good remembering something. You know, the whole brain injury, it messes you up. They tell me how I was before, I can remember some of it too, my parents, my mother and stuff. School and friends. It was the recent stuff they said that would go away and it has. But I felt very good in remembering you, and I hope we were good enough friends that you'd be inclined to meet with me, and actually happy I'm alive.

Sometimes I have dreams. I hear your voice, maybe you visited once or twice while I was out away in that coma. They say you can hear stuff when you're in a coma. No, I'm just hearing echoes now. But I hear your voice and I guess it could be a memory too. But I dream of a girl too. We were close weren't we, did I have a girlfriend when I went out? I'd like to meet up with her again, just to catch up. I bet she moved on though, she struck me as a strong woman. A warrior woman, my warrior woman. She's probably out in the suburbs, with a husband and a kid. A working mother and still a good mother. I bet she's somewhere else happy, wondering only occasionally about the guy she knew that was me.

I thought of you and fear they'd come for me. It's irrational but still, I was afraid. I don't know why really. Weird huh. I guess I was important, important enough to be watched by men in suits. Maybe I did something bad to get into that coma, it's not easy to get into comas you know, you gotta do something big. I'm good with computers, they took away my computers. They took away my computers.

So sit in the morgue and I do my poetry and I tell my therapist and I go to sleep and dream. We should see each other again. We should go out and get some food. If you're not busy. Men in suits like you are usually busy.

It's raining outside, please excuse the water marks, my roof is leaky.

How are you?

Yours truthfully, Thomas.


	2. A Letter Confirming That Hope

Dear, Thomas

I will admit that I was pleased to find a letter in the mail that personally addressed me and not another electrical bill for the television I don't even use. I was even more pleased to find it was from an old acquaintance like you. I too happened to be thinking of you and did wonder what had become of you. It is unfortunate that you seem to only giving bad news. A coma you say, I'm terribly sorry. I can't imagine, to sleep and not sleep, to I suppose I'll say exist and not. I am curious will you tell me what it was like? They say you're aware when you're in comas, in that case I'm sorry I was not there to at least read you the paper, it must be awfully dull and boring.

I will be happy to inform you on the grounds of which we met. I used to be a law enforcer, a sort of CIA but lesser so. You were a computer hacker as I recall, a very good one in fact, that we had to take you in as it were. This is where we met you, and upon your release we struck up further conversations than we had had in interrogations and here we are. We did often meet I believe it was on Tuesdays when you took your day off, at a café and spoke. Beyond that it never grew. I suppose you had your accident that led to your coma because we ceased speaking for all these years, and now that I know what has happened I am sorry.

However this reveals why you're being followed from who I assume to be my old colleagues and why you are not allowed computers. You must have forgotten what you knew in your coma but you were one of the best hackers out there and a seller of illegal computer programs. Your time that you spend jailed I remember was brief.

Is it my colleagues? Jones and Brown? They come and visit me as well from time to time, we were close friends back in the day. I can account for all the water cooler conversations and breaks between the running. I wielded a gun you know. To think I could have shot you at any moment! How funny. Anyway it must be them, I wonder why they've never mentioned you, they knew you and I were friends of sorts. It must have slipped their minds. I'll tell them the next time they come for coffee.

Sometimes I'm tempted to get a therapist in this world. How I wonder and ask can things be so chaotic in life and yet so endlessly methodical? It makes no sense how the world is run and how people are raised to think. The world dangles on a string, Thomas, you remember I said that, someday it's going to snap and we're all going to die. Why the world happens to be run in fear I have no idea, all our lives we're told of things to be afraid of, be it strangers to rapists to gunners and terrorists. Why are these things even allowed to become? Sometimes I wish order would be brought to this world, something that makes it better, makes it safer, a place where all thought as one and worked as one. I suppose the integration of cultures as you've said and you yourself are a product of is a step towards that (Hawaiian and European, no wonder I could not tell your ethnicity when I saw you). If we all mix with each other no one can hate another!

Despite what you think I remembering finding what you had to say fascinating.

I can assure you there are no cameras in your apartment, Jones and Brown and I would never do that the department we worked for never did that, we caught who we caught and that was it. We were given assignments and instructions and we followed through nothing more and nothing less.

I can't say that I've taken a good look at the sky since I was a child. Though I recall being fascinated by the sky when I was that child. My father had a telescope and he'd show me the stars and consellations at night. Of course you can't see the sky anymore, the stars I mean from the lights of the city. Sometimes I feel a need to go away from all this chaos and the citylife. I'd like to feel grass between my fingers, and the wind.

But I will tell you this my friend, the methodic life that has left you with nothing has treated me no better. I suppose during your coma I was going through a nervous breakdown. I can't say what caused it but one day I simply could not stand it anymore. The methodic life. In fact you know what? I detest it. I hate it. I loathe this life I've been given. I get up I go to work and what? What have I done? I've allowed the machine that is the world to continue? No if I was not there someone else would take my place as if I never existed and the world would go on just fine. These days there can't be heroes. These days of overpopulation and maximum output, everyone gorging themselves on dwindling supplies, no one is appreciated, no one is noticed. A flaw in this new society, the lack of appreciation for the working hands of this world. Faceless we're all faceless in the eyes of the people with power. We're but numbers and I hate that. There's something in me that wishes to scream to take that power, I'd give it to everyone, everyone would have some and everyone would be needed and necessary.

Everyone would have a purpose.

The methodic life drove me mad and finally I snapped, I was pulled too far. And I was deemed unsuitable for the job I had been given and now I live my life by government given money and government given home and heating and everything. I don't need to work I am no longer part of the system. Free you might think. But no. We are here because we aren't free. We are bound by the laws of this world and it makes sure no single person can have enough power to break free. There is a sense of emptiness, Thomas, I cannot describe, not providing for myself but being given everything I need.

I have no purpose I doubt I ever did, and here I am like a child taken care of all my needs. It's maddening that I cannot provide for myself, that I cannot take care of myself. Only because one day I simply could not handle myself, one day, one single day and now it's all over, it left me behind, the world that is, and I'm left to simple watch it as it dangles there on its string.

I look to your struggle and your strife with envious eyes, for when you someday move to a better apartment to a better home when you meet someone and gain their trust there is a feeling of great reward. You earned that new place that new friend, you worked with blood and sweat and tears and gained something and for that moment all of it, all your troubles are briefly worth it. And if nothing you are left with these small pleasures dotted through out your life and you are happy.

I did my job well Thomas, we caught you, and still here I am. There is no rewards in this world, no justice or fairness. I cannot stand this place. If I were a braver man I'd leave this very moment. You probably only imagined me intimidating because the first time we met I had power behind me, I had authority that is now gone. You and I are not so different, remember that.

The world is an unsatisfying place, the quicker you realize that the smarter you are, and let me tell you there are people that go their entire lives not realizing that. You and I, Thomas, we're awake, we can see it. We should not be ashamed of that. Our lives are empty, we have a right to be lonely, there is nothing wrong with that.

Your sort of flying tears something inside me, it sounds wonderful, like a child's dream but to know it is you, the man I had so many conversations with that is saying it somehow makes it all the more impacting and relatable.

You seem imaginative Thomas, I suppose one in your position would be. I suggest that if you ever dream or think of something wonderful you write it down and make something of it. Produce something in this world that lasts longer than you, that is what we all wish for, immortality.

Do you fear death as I do? I myself am not religious in the least, I doubt all forms of a God and all forms of a Heaven though I admit my limited perception of what is reality. However there is something terrifying don't you think about death? That when I die everything I was, everything that means so much, my mind, my heart, what I was and what I did on this Earth is gone? It simply ends there, there is no continuation let us stop fooling ourselves. But it's so horrible to think what I am and all that I am and ever could be ends there in such a little life. Not only that Thomas! But we spend the first young times of our life trapped by parents and limited freedom, and then in the oldest years when we can appreciate what life is we are weak and immobile to do what we could have! We spend half our lives unable to do anything! It is ridiculous! And I fear death with ever bit of myself.

To work in a morgue, my goodness, so close to death and everything, you must come home smelling of death don't you? Tell me what do you see death as, as one so close to it all day?

I am so led to leave a mark on the world but find there is no way I can. The world is cruel, the world is loathsome.

I don't ever recall you mentioning a girlfriend, I'm sorry.

I admit to my social problems as well. Most people I meet are intellectually boring, and you Thomas, you sound merely off as anyone would in your position I will not put that past you and I admit it gives you a new outlook and makes you a refreshing person to talk to. I simply have no need to go out and meet more people because I am sure I will be disappointed in my selection. People are all their same, just in variations of skin color, ridiculous this fuss about outward appearance, we're all the same lonesome hideously dull creatures. I am disappointed in the human potential, I am disgusted by the human desire, I find love to be insipid. Jones and Brown are nice and I cherish their friendship however you and I were close friends long ago, it feels good I say to hear from you once more.

If you need a place to stay come and see the bounty of our government and what it can provide to people who it does not want any longer, my plain apartment in the business district.

I tell you now Thomas I am so pleased you have written and I implore you to appreciate your life. We will talk again soon.

Truly,

A. Smith


End file.
